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 POST

(preceding Dr. Ph3'sick) of the celebrated John Hunter, of London, from whose Hps and those of Mr. Sheldon, he imbibed those principles of practice which he afterwards so ably and usefully applied.

"Two great achievements are on record to attest his powers. He was the first in this country to tie, successfully, on the Hunterian principle, the femoral artery for popliteal aneurysm. On the second memorable occasion, I had the honor to assist him; it was a case of ligature of the subclavian artery above the clavicle, without the scaleni muscles, for an aneurysm of the brachial, involv- ing the axilla. The patient came to me from New Haven, in company with an intimate professional friend of mine, the late Dr. Gilbert; the aneurysm was cracked and oozing, and supported by layers of adhesive plaster, by which its rupture was prevented, and life main- tained untd the time of the operation. The brother of the patient, a merchant of New York, whose family Dr. Post attended, naturally preferred that he should perform the operation, as I was then quite young. To this -wish I cheer- fully acceded, but lost thus the chance of gaining a surgical laurel for my brow — the operation never having been per- formed in this country before, and but once in Europe, and then unsuccessfully, by its first projector, Mr. Ramsden, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. This is now, happily, a well recognized surgical procedure, which six times I have successfully performed. In this operation, the American needle for the ligatiu-e of deep-seated arteries was first used in New York, and it belonged to me.

He married Miss Bailey of New York in 1790. After a career of forty years as a professor of anatomy, he retired into private professional life, in which he con- tinued active, with occasional intervals of ill health, until his death, in the sixty- fourth year of liis age. He died on the fourteenth of June, 1828, at Throg's Neck, New York, universally esteemed.

282 POTT

deeply regretted, and leaving a good posterit3\ "

C. R. B.

Valentine Mott's Address, College of Physi- cians and Surgeons, New York, 1850. William's Amer. Med. Biog., 1845.

Pott, John (16 1652(?).

Dr. John Pott being ordained by the London Court to succeed Lawrence Bohune as physician to the Colony of ^'irginia, sailed vdth his wife Ehzabeth on the George and landed at Jamestown in 1620. Having succeeded to the Coun- cil in Virginia it seems natural that Pott should covet the former official's station and emoluments — that of physician- general to the Colony, with five hundred acres of land and twenty tenants. The minutes of the London Company for the sixteenth of July, 1621, show that he was recommended for the position by Dr. Wilham Gulston: "For so much as the phisicans place to the company was now become voyde by reason of the untimely death of Dr. Bohune, slain in the fight with two Spanish shipps of Warr the nineteenth of March last, Dr. Gulstone did now take occasion to recommend unto the company for the said place one Mr. Potts, a Mr. of Artes, well practised in Chirurgerie and Physique, and expert also in distillinge of waters, and that he had many other ingenious devices so as he supposed his service would be of great use unto the colony in Virginia."

The Council ordered that " If Mr. Pott would accept of the place upon the same conditions as Dr. Bohune did, he should be entertained and for his better content should be specially recommended to the Governor to be well accommodated and should have a chest of Physique ;£20 charge unto the company, and aU things thereunto apertaining together with ;glO in books of Physique which should always belonge unto the company, which chest of Physique and Books Dr. Gulstone was desired to by, and seeing he intended to carry over with him his wife a man and a maid they should have their transporte freed, and if one or more Chirurgions